A Longtime Post-Dispatch Writer Says Goodbye to the Newsroom

On Tuesday, Valerie Schremp Hahn left the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Post-Dispatch is her hometown newspaper, and she'd written for it for 26 years. As a features writer, Hahn's byline has often accompanied some of the most enjoyable stories in it, but now she joins a long line of colleagues who've moved on this year — some by choice, others not.

Hahn's departure was her idea. (She starts a new job as an associate editor for a national nonprofit group on June 1.) And on her way out the door, she shared some reflections with colleagues in a farewell email that will likely resonate with anyone who's given their love, in her words, to an industry that "sometimes doesn't love you back."

We're reprinting her farewell here with her permission, and with one light edit to include a thought she wished she'd added on the first pass. Contrary to the subject line of her email, she is not a writer who needs much editing at all. We will miss reading her work.

Subject: One more thing from me that could probably use a good edit

Hi, all -

I sometimes roll my eyes at these farewell emails and can’t read them. I fully understand if you can’t and this is super annoying — if you skip to the end, that’s where you’ll find the important stuff, my contact information.

I’ve been thinking a lot about metaphors — particularly, transportation disaster metaphors. A certain Pulitzer-winning photographer we love to hate and hate to love has compared this newspaper ride to a plummeting plane — and he’s ready to strap in and go down with it, but probably hoping it will right itself. I’ve always referred to myself as a violinist on the Titanic, something that’s a little easier to do over in features because we do cover music, after all. But we know how the Titanic situation turned out — I’m not sure if any violinists survived — and I’m not quite ready to see this place as a husk on the ocean floor.

I told a few of you about this last night at my sendoff, but now I’m thinking about this place as a train. A bit of a crazy train. You probably have to help me workshop this a bit more. I’m not exactly sure who sits in the conductor’s seat — Lee corporate or maybe Father Time himself. Usually the train just chugs along, and sometimes it slows down, and occasionally it speeds up and gets a little like a trippy Willy Wonka ride while the conductor cranks up the Thomas the Train theme song at full volume and faster speed over the PA system, and we all look up at each other like, “What the hell?”

Sometimes, people throw crap on the tracks, or lob tear gas canisters or fire guns or maybe just insults. For the most part, the train is full of hard-working, smart, funny people with the tray tables holding our laptops. We’re just keeping our heads down, trying to get things done, trying to get a little closer to the truth.

The train used to be more crowded — full of characters, of smarter people than us, and a few who pushed around electronic files all day or played grabass and probably shouldn’t have been let on in the first place. We’ve saved seats for some and put our bags next to us to avoid others. We gaze at even more empty seats — some people were pushed off the train, and that's a bad way to go.

It’s still nice to have people there, even if some of us kinda like sitting in our bathrobes. And hey, now the train car has WiFi. Like, finally. The club car used to offer better snacks — like those Gourmet to Go Box lunches with the lemon bars and little cups of pasta salad we’d get for newsroom trainings, or the meals we’d expense during an out-of-town journalism seminar the paper used to pay for. But there’s usually still pizza on election night, or a newsroom cheerleader brings in tons of smoked brisket and cheese and everybody brings in other stuff to round it out and then suddenly there’s a Stone Soup kind of thing going on. (Related: I’ve left you all that half-full jar of hard candy from Aldi at my desk, along with a half-eaten bag of barbecue chips. I ate the other half.)

And then there’s the people out the window. There’s the politicians with their hacker patrols and the politicians running away with their fists in the air, the weirdos who send all the weirdo email, the pundits and all the social media, all the people who need help, the people who call us fake news, the dead bodies, the fleeing Famous-Barr ad reps and the smoldering landscape of an increasingly damaged system.

But then there’s the baby zoo animals and the renovated entertainment complexes and the scientists and the committees of do-gooders and people with big and small checkbooks still making a difference. There’s our proud parents, our English teachers, our former colleagues and thousands of readers who, like us, are just minding their own business, reading our work, trying to figure out who to vote for and how to better themselves and their families and their communities.

There’s the newspapers themselves if they make it out the windows, sometimes chucked under the neighbor’s bushes. They’re probably wet. But good news: digital is on the upswing.

Some of us, probably all of us, have looked out the windows, trying to spot a safe place to jump off. We’re not sure if we’re going to end up in a ravine or a pit of alligators or maybe some boring field of wheat PR firm. In my case, a former newspaper editor of mine I liked showed up, beckoning with a giant, fluffy pillow. I did my research and I am pretty sure that pillow is not a My Pillow. But I did muster a lot of strength to take the leap. It will be a soft landing, so I’m told, though it will be a struggle to get comfortable. Now I’m midair, and that’s altogether exciting and terrifying.

I commend those of you staying on this crazy train. I’m not sure what else I can tell you except keep your seatbelt buckled, keep your head down, and kick away whatever crap people throw on the tracks. And keep glancing out the window, because I hope you’ll see me out there, cheering and waving furiously.

It’s been a ride, good people. Thank you. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Val

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